The Man with No Face
by Kaelan
Summary: Chase starts having trouble sleeping, but then the nightmares start to follow him when he's awake. AU from start of season 8 NOW COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

_He woke up gasping for breath. This was how drowning felt like, he was sure of it. His eyes opened but focusing on the room around him was impossible, and all he could see was blurs of white and blue._

 _"_ _Help!" he cried, and thought he heard the faint beeping of a nearby machine. Hands were soon pushing a mask to his face, saying something in a soothing voice, but he couldn't understand the words. He tensed his back so that he arched backward, pushing his neck against the bed and raising his abdomen in the air. The hands pressed against his shoulders, and he felt air start to flow back into his lungs. His back relaxed into the bed and he breathed deeply._

 _"_ _Just relax." he heard the voice saying, still pressing the mask against his face. No longer in need of it, he pushed it away and tried to sit up._

 _"_ _Where am I?" he asked. His hands were both covered in thick cotton gloves, and he couldn't put his weight on them, or even move his fingers. "Where am I?"_

 _The woman in front of him came into focus briefly. "You're in the hospital. Be still, or you'll hurt yourself."_

 _"_ _Why? What happened?"_

 _The nurse sighed._

 _"_ _I'll call the doctor."_

 _He heard her walk away, and immediately his chest tightened. Why were his hands bound? Why was he at the hospital? He sat up again, swung his legs over the edge of the table, and fell down to the floor. The IV he hadn't noticed in his hand was pulled out and started to stain the white glove and drip blood on the floor. He felt his breath become shallow, raspy, and he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to the bed. He crawled towards the exit and his vision tunneled, still unfocused. He only got halfway to the door before he felt his face growing numb and the light become even dimmer. The door opened, but instead of a body coming in he only saw shadows wrapped in eerie light._

 _"_ _Chase!" The voice called, with fiery red eyes and a face that was a pure black void. He came nearer, and Chase felt his throat closing up and his vision fading, until all he could see was black and red. But he was too tired to escape._

Chase opened his eyes as soon as the alarm rang and let out a sigh of relief. The night had dragged on forever, with him drifting in and out of twisting nightmares of falling and drowning, intertwined with waking up trapped inside his blankets or shivering after pushing them all to the floor. He didn't feel rested at all.

It was the third day in a row that he didn't sleep well, and his face showed it. Even after showering and getting dressed his eyes appeared to be stuck in half mast. He made an attempt at breakfast but felt a bitter taste in his throat after the first bite of his sandwich. His stomach turned. _Maybe it was the cold_. He'd been suffering from fever and congestion all the past week, but now all that remained was the fatigue and a dry cough.

He had arrived at the conference room and was pouring himself some coffee when Foreman walked in.

"Hey, House not here yet?" He asked. Chase looked around, annoyed that he asked such an obvious question.

"Clearly not," he said, his eyes still on the coffee.

"Ok... could you tell him to give me a call when he shows up?"

"Why, what's going on, do we have case?" he asked.

"Not really. Just let him know I'm looking for him, alright?"

"Fine, whatever," he answered, and Foreman frowned at him for a second before going on his way. He realized how uncharacteristic and full of spite his voice had been, but the words had been out faster than he could control. This was going to be a long day.

"Chase? Chase" he heard a voice calling, but it sounded distant. Then a feeling like his body was being shaken, but everything around him was still dark.

"Chase, come on," the voice said again. It sounded familiar. He looked around, looking for the voice, but then he felt a shove, and suddenly the darkness dissolved. He found himself on his car, driving along a dirt road he recognised from back home. But he turned and the road became strange, unknown. His foot pressed on the accelerator against his better judgement. In front, the road came to an end. And then he was falling. His hands grabbed at the wheel and the seatbelt pressed against his chest and then-

"Chase!"

He woke with a start, immediately rising to his feet in a state of mild panic. Foreman stood in front of him in the lounge of the doctors' rest area. He let out a breath, and felt cold sweat building up in the back of his head.

"Foreman" he said, trying in vain to straighten the wrinkles from his shirt. "Did anything happen?"

"House was looking for you, I think your patient's getting sicker."

"Oh. Ok, I'll be there right now."

"Are you alright?" Foreman said, and took a step forward as if analysing him. Suddenly, a dark, fluttering feeling rose in the pit of his stomach. It was diffuse, unidentifiable, and Chase couldn't pinpoint the cause. He had no reason to be scared.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine" Chase said, with a little more enthusiasm than he meant. "I slept really badly last night, still got this cough, you know, just needed to lie down for a bit," he said, then paused. Foreman just nodded. "Well, I'll be going now."

He pushed the door to the conference room and felt his nerves begin to calm down. _It's the lack of sleep_ , he thought, recalling other times he had been awoken in the middle of a dream, and the feeling of grogginess that usually followed.

"Hey Taub" he called to his colleague, who was passing time making coffee. The rest of the room was empty. "How's the patient?"

"Her blood pressure's way up. She has to have some sort of infection but we haven't figured out what exactly." Taub said. "Where were you?"

"I had to check on a follow up from the clinic." he lied. The feeling in his stomach returned. He felt nervous, like he had done something wrong.

"Oh." Taub said, paying him little attention

"Listen, if House shows up tell him I'm on the clinic. I'm behind on my hours." he said. The need to be doing something was sudden. He wouldn't spend the rest of his day sitting there waiting for stuff to happen. He walked back to the first floor, but only checked up a couple of patients before signing out. As fast as it came, his energy was gone.

That night he dreamt he was back in a car, only this time he was on the passenger seat of an old jeep. It was dark, and his mother was driving through an open plain. She looked beautiful in a silent, eerie kind of way. He rarely looked at pictures of her, and it had been more than a decade since she died, but Chase wasn't surprised to see her.

"Mum, slow down." he said, when the car skidded along a turn. She laughed. The plain transformed, and a mountain rose on the right side and an abyss formed on the left. The road was so narrow Chase couldn't see the edge from the window, except from the shrub that marked the start of the ravine, and then a dark, deep valley. The driving became more and unstable, and Chase felt the car lose its grip on the side of the road, then recover. The gritty road made the car vibrate violently, and with every twist he felt the edge grow closer..

"Phew, that was a close call," his mum said. Her face was no longer beautiful, but rather marred with age lines and dark bags under her eyes, her hair a frizzy mess around her head. The tumble intensified, but this time she wasn't able to get the car back, and they began to fall.

 _Wake up_ , Chase thought, suddenly aware, but the car kept shaking violently and the path in front of them disappeared. The car turned sideways, then skidded. When the shock came, he felt it, and found himself hanging upside down with a blinding pain in his head. It was only after he realised he was alone that he sighed in relief, and let himself fall back into darkness.

He spent the rest of the night shifting and turning, but he never fell asleep again.

 **Thanks for reading! This story is finished so you don't have to worry I'll leave you hanging, I'll just be proofreading. Let me know what you think!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: So glad to see there are still people reading these things (and that I'm not the only one that hasn't moved on haha). Giving you short chapter now since I'll probably be away during the weekend. Enjoy!**

House walked back to his office from the cafeteria. It was late afternoon, and the case was stalled. They had confirmed a bacterial infection but didn't know exactly which kind was attacking the little girl's liver and lungs, and broad spectrum antibiotics were losing the battle. He pushed the glass door to the conference room and stared at the white board, running over possibilities in his mind. He was the infectious disease specialist. If anyone could solve this, it was him.

"Any change?" he asked Chase, the only fellow back in the room. The rest were still in the lab testing samples, but Chase had excused himself because of his cough.

"Not yet." he said, "But least she's no longer getting worse."

"That's not good enough" House said, then stopped staring at the board to look back at Chase "Why aren't you doing anything?"

Chase looked affronted. "I am, I'm reviewing the literature. You know I shouldn't be back at the lab…" Then, as if on cue, he sneezed, covering his mouth with the neck of his elbow.

"Bless you" House said.

"Thanks"

"You feeling alright?" he asked, knowing it was a weird question coming from him. But there was no commiseration in his tone - something about Chase had called his attention. His mind was telling him something was wrong, though he was not quite sure why.

"Um, yes? Are you alright?" Chase answered, looking up from the laptop in front of him, obviously puzzled by House's concern.

"Your left hand was twitching," House said. They both looked at his hand. If it was twitching, it wasn't anymore.

"No it's not" Chase said.

"Hence _was_." House said, then tried to change the subject. "What dosage is she on now?"

"1.5g, we increased it two hours ago."

"Ok, let me know if anything changes," he said, then stood up to leave.

He tried to find Wilson at his office, but he was with a patient. Annoyed, he tried to find an empty room to watch some tv on, but the hospital was unusually busy. He'd interrupted about four different patients when he ran into Foreman.

* * *

"House, I've been trying to reach you," he said, changing directions to walk with him. Ignoring him, House tried another door, but again it was occupied. "House.."

"If this is about my clinic hours, I've had a cold, didn't think it was fair to the patients," he said. He sniffed once for drama's sake, then pushed another door open. "Aha!"

"House! You don't have a cold."

"Says you." He climbed up to the empty bed and crossed his feet, and opened up a game in his phone. In front of him, Foreman fumed.

"What about your patient?"

"Still waiting on some tests, but so far she's stable. The idiot forgot to mention she had travelled to Brazil recently, dengue's most likely," he said, not raising his eyes from his phone.

"Where's the team?"

"Running said tests."

"You know, I saw Chase sleeping in the doctor's lounge yesterday, so they can't be under that much workload," Foreman mentioned, almost casually. This caught House's attention immediately, and he put the game down.

"He was sleeping?" he said. House thought back to the hunch he'd had back in the conference room.

"Yeah, I had to shake him awake, and he freaked out." Foreman said.

"Something's wrong with him."

"What?"

"I don't know yet. Tempted to say it's a drinking problem, but I can't be sure."

"We're supposed to go for a couple drinks tomorrow. I'll keep an eye on him."

House nodded. Drinking seemed like the most obvious explanation. It accounted for his irritability, the tiredness.. but Chase was raised by an alcoholic, if he was drinking didn't he know how to hide it better?

* * *

Next day he kept an eye on him, and things he hadn't noticed or hadn't been there before started to pop up. He saw his left hand shake again when he held up some of the patient's x-rays, though it was very mild, and again his face showed signs of poor sleep. But most glaring was the way he acted, like if someone was constantly pushing his buttons, sniping back with aggressive retorts. That afternoon, he found him napping back at the lounge, and decided to test one of his theories.

"Hey" Foreman said, walking into the office and shutting the door behind him. "You could be right about Chase drinking."

"I'm not."

"What do you mean?"

"I tested him yesterday. I couldn't find him so I went to the lounge. Found him sleeping, put an alcohol meter to his mouth, he didn't even notice."

"So he was negative?"

"Zero. If it was alcohol related it would at least show something. Did he drink last night?"

"Yeah. It wasn't an awful lot, it was just the way he acted. At first he barely talked, didn't flirt with anybody, then he started getting agitated, sorta buzzed but not in a good way. He didn't seem like himself at all."

"So what, he's depressed?"

"Maybe? I don't know, I can't be sure, it seems too sudden."

"So…" House stood up and walked to the whiteboard in the other room. "Irritability, irregular sleep patterns, fatigue…"

"House, you realised these are symptoms of a million things, right? He's probably not even sick, maybe he's gotten bad news, or just going through a slump."

House flipped the board, showing the symptoms of their real patient.

"We'll see."

 **A/N: Thanks for reading! Things start picking up on the next chapter, this fic will be somewhat longer than the last. If you let me know what you think in the box below it'd be awesome!**


	3. Chapter 3

Chase rounded the corner towards the diagnostics office and let out a tense breath when he saw the team was all there. He'd been hoping for a couple of minutes of free time before he was thrown back into the differential banter. Through the glass, he heard clearly when Taub said "There he is", and they all turned towards him as he took his seat, as if waiting for him to announce himself.

"So?" Adams asked. Chase paused nervously. Again, the feeling that he was missing something. He felt his muscles tense up, but his mind drew a blank.

"So what?"

"How did the biopsy go?"

"What biopsy?" he said, growing more concerned.

"Are you an idiot?" House raised his voice. "The biopsy you were supposed to be doing, on the mole!"

"What? You never told me to do any biopsies.. I just had the dermatologist look it over, he said it looked fine.."

House stared at him with an intensity that made it impossible for him to keep eye contact.

"Yes, he did tell you, Chase," Park said, in a meek, low voice.

"All the other tests have been negative, we needed to be sure on the mole. It looked suspicious to me." Adams said, looking back at House for approval, but the head of diagnostics kept his eyes on Chase. He didn't recognize it at that point, but he was looking at him the same way he stared at an intriguing patient file. He was trying to figure out the puzzle.

"What were you doing then, if you weren't doing the biopsy?" House said, finally. Chase looked at him, certain that this was a misunderstanding, but he couldn't help but feeling attacked. He wanted to answer, but his mouth seemed to rebel against him, the pause doing nothing to make him any more believable.

"I was.. I was with the dermatologist" he said. Nausea bubbled up at the pit of his stomach, and he felt the blood drain from his face. He knew his reaction was irrational, but that wasn't what worried him the most. He couldn't remember what he'd been doing before walking back to the conference room. The last hour was a complete blank.

"What were you doing, playing poker with him, what took you so long?"

"I lost track of time, alright? I'll take care of the biopsy now," he said, standing up again. He left before anyone could say anything else, but he felt their eyes boring on his back, judging him. He considered that he was getting played, but it didn't fit the case either. If he had forgotten where he'd been he could have easily forgotten when they told him to do a biopsy.

He made sure the attending and the dermatologist were carrying on with the procedure before he headed downstairs to Foreman's office. The nervous feeling, which he had toned down significantly since leaving diagnostics, came back as soon as he put his hand to the doorknob and pushed into the dean of medicine's pristine office.

"Chase. What's up?" Foreman said, more like a greeting than a question.

"Hey, sorry, are you busy?"

"Why, is everything alright?"

Chase shifted. He felt like admitting he had a problem would make him look incompetent in the eyes of his former colleague. Sometimes he wished Foreman hadn't been promoted, as now he wasn't sure when he was acting as his friend and when as his boss.

"I need you to write me a prescription for some sleeping pills," he said, taking a seat in front of him.

"Does this has something to do with the couch in the doctors' lounge?"

Chase scoffed. He knew Foreman would not forget about that easily.

"It's falling asleep at night that's the problem."

"Have you been feeling alright? Are you taking anything else?"

"Foreman, I'm not your patient, can't you just write it?"

"If you're not my patient then why ask me at all? I'm sure you can get an appointment with a GP. Maybe you should."

"Seriously? You're going to be like that?"

"Since when do you have trouble sleeping?"

Chase rolled his eyes, annoyed. "Fine. About a week."

"Have you been taking anything else? Drugs? Alcohol?"

"Foreman…" he protested again, even though he knew he would ask the same questions to any other patient.

"The faster you answer, the faster I can get you those pills."

"No alcohol except for the other night. Some over-the-counter sleeping aids yesterday."

"Stress? Caffeine?"

"No more than usual." he said. He didn't mention the nervousness he'd been feeling lately, but told himself that was probably a consequence of sleep, not a cause.

"Nightmares or vivid dreams?"

Chase paused before answering.

"Yes."

"Ok.. Feeling alright lately?"

It was the third time someone had asked him that in the past week. Chase didn't know how to explain how he felt like his thoughts were disorganised. How his minds seemed full of things that hadn't bothered him in years. Again, he paused. Foreman seemed to get his uneasiness.

"Chase, what's bothering you?"

Chase looked down. He hadn't come prepared to lay his issues on Foreman.

"There's nothing bothering me. I've just been feeling weird. I can't really explain it."

"Weird how, can you give me an example?"

Chase started to fiddle with a pen in the desk. His nervousness increased, and he felt a bitter taste in his mouth.

"I can't really remember what I did the past hour," he said. He knew Foreman wouldn't just let him go after this confession, but the thought of another night without sleep was even more daunting.

"What do you mean?"

He kept his gaze down while he spoke, still fiddling with the pen.

"Apparently, House asked me to do a biopsy, but I don't remember that. I remember being in the conference room, then returning, but nothing that happened between."

"Is this the first time this has happened?"

"Yes."

"Chase, I'm sorry, but you need to get checked out, that's not normal."

"Sleep deprivation could've caused it. Just let me try the pills and-"

"But you've been sleeping through the day. Chase, this is serious, that kind of memory loss could've been a seizure."

The thought of that had occurred to him, but he hadn't yet allowed himself to consider it as a possibility.

"I know. Listen, let me try the pills tonight, then I'll get checked out."

"You need an MRI."

"I'll have an MRI! I'll have an EEG, even a bloody PET scan if you want me too, but I'll bet they'll be clean. Just let me try the pills tonight."

Foreman sighed, then made an act out of taking out his prescription pad. He put his hand out to get the pen, but Chase had already taken out his cap and started bending around the plastic casing, so he fetched one from a drawer in the side.

"I'm going to take you up on that and schedule you for tomorrow. Go home now, alright?"

Chase nodded, took the piece of paper and left without another word. After making sure the team would get the biopsy results, he took his things and left.

* * *

Foreman walked up to House's office after everyone else had left. He knew that because the lights were off, but he'd checked the basement for House's bike and so knew he was still there. He went in without knocking, and saw his former boss stretched in his sofa, sleeping.

"House?"

"What?" House opened his eyes immediately. He'd heard Foreman come in.

"I talked to Chase," he said.

"You told him he could leave today?"

"Yeah. He told me he's been having trouble sleeping. Asked for some pills."

"Well, that's hardly news" said House. His body was still slouched in the chair, but Foreman had turned the lamp on and he pressed his hand to his face to shield his eyes from the light.

"He said something about an incident today, about a biopsy. What was that about?"

"Oh, that. He came back from doing god knows what when he was supposed to be doing the biopsy, then denied that I told him to do it."

"He said he doesn't remember it."

"The biopsy?"

"You telling him to do it, and everything that he did before returning to the office."

"Interesting."

"I think he's having seizures."

"It fits, but what brought them on?"

House stood up, and turned the white board around. Below 'fatigue' he wrote, 'memory loss' and 'complex partial seizures?'

"He insists it's all because of the sleeping issues."

"There's something else."

"What?"

"Not sure, but I'll bet he's hiding something. I've seen him like this before, but it was back when the whole Cameron deal went down. I can't see a reason here."

"Well, he's having an MRI tomorrow, maybe an EEG too."

"What are you thinking?" House said. Foreman could tell in the way that he passed his felt ball from hand to hand that he was intrigued. He didn't share his worry. For him, it was all about the mystery. The puzzle.

"I want to rule out seizures. I'm leaning towards a thyroid issue."

"What about some other psych problem?"

"Could be, but still seems too sudden. Listen, I'll keep you on the loop, but you know I can't share his test results unless he agrees. Don't tell him I told you this."

House nodded.

 **A/N: Thank you all for reading and reviewing! It really makes my day to hear from you. Some action coming next chapter!**


	4. Chapter 4

_Twilight seeped through the windows of the hospital room, and Chase saw the shadows make curling shapes in the white wall. Like a swarm, a dark mass moved slowly across the edge of the hospital bed, spreading and contracting, as if it was breathing. He moved his hands, trying to raise himself to a sitting position, but they were too weak. A million thoughts passed through his head, but he couldn't speak, words seemed swiped away from his memory. The swarm transformed, turning into the man with no face that came to see him from time to time, whose red eyes were the only detail he distinguished in the darkness. But the man kept quiet this time, and so did he. In the darkness, they stared at each other, until his silhouette got lost in the background, leaving Chase to wonder if it was ever there at all._

 _-v-v-v-v-  
_  
Chase arrived early the next morning for a bout of testing. Foreman had connected him with a neurologist in the third floor, and insisted he take the earliest appointment possible. That night he had slept, and he had woken up from a thankfully dreamless night feeling drowsy and sick. Despite the rest, he didn't feel any less tired, and instead felt as though his legs were sluggish, as if walking through water.

He struggled not to fall asleep inside the MRI and then waited patiently for his head to be filled with coloured wires for the EEG. All the while he grew more and more impatient. Two hours later, when the last wire was pulled out of his hair, he met the neurologist again. The nervousness was gone, he noted. Instead, a deep-seated anger had taken over, though he wasn't quite sure why.

"You've got the all-clear, Dr. Chase," the man said, reviewing the slides in front of him. "Blood tests were also clean, no infection and your thyroid is doing just fine." Great, he thought, the entire morning wasted. Before he stood up to leave, the doctor added "This is probably just due to stress, just take it easy for a couple of days. This job can be a handful, I should know."

"Right," he said, his face betraying no expression, then took his leave. On the hallway, he ran into Foreman.

"Hey! How'd it go?" he asked. He was concerned, but Chase didn't see that. Instead, he got the sense that Foreman was mocking him.

"How'd you think it went? It's all in my fucking head, is that what you wanted to hear? You had me prodded and scanned all morning, just so that doctor could tell me it's all in my head. Good joke, I'll give you that. Hope you're happy."

Chase then pushed his way forward, not waiting for Foreman to reply. He didn't want to hear what he had to say, he felt humiliated, like Foreman was to blame for him spending hours waiting around in a hospital gown.

"Chase!" Foreman called after him, then picked up the pace to catch up. "Chase, come on"

"What?" he said, still walking, still not looking at him.

"Chase, what's wrong?"

"That's the problem!" he raised his voice, and heard it echo. "That's the problem, exactly _._ _Nothing_ is wrong! Go ask him if you don't believe me."

The words rolled out of his mouth with a vile intensity he didn't recognise. He could tell from Foreman's face that he was overreacting, but the part of him that would normally calm himself down was gone. Instead, he felt as though his emotions had taken control of his body, and there was nothing he could do about it.

 _Why now? Why was he feeling this way now? Was it because of the EEG? Something in the cables or the MRI that had made him act like that, some sort of trigger? A drug, something taking away his control?_ The thought planted itself in his head and he could not shake it. It sounded, at the same time, incredibly irrational and perfectly reasonable, and for a moment he was surprised that it had come to his mind, but as crazy as it seemed he couldn't dismiss it.

"Whoa, calm down," said Foreman. "Why are you so upset?" Chase looked at him like he was slow. _Maybe Foreman was in on it as well._ No, that was ridiculous. Everything was fine. Nothing was wrong.

"I'm not upset. I'm fine."

"Well, you got a funny way of showing it then. You know, just because the tests were clear doesn't mean everything is ok. I'm worried about you. You've been acting really weird lately."

"Weird? Weird how?" he said. He knew he'd been acting weird, but he didn't know why. He should've known the rest would notice sooner or later.

"Like, angry all the time, and I know you're not like that. You're making these strange pauses every time I ask you something, and right now you're not even looking at me."

Suddenly, Chase felt as though a heavy weight was pressing down on his chest, and his hand trembled as he ran it through his hair. Foreman was right. The anger was gone and instead a misplaced anxiety clawed at his throat. He felt the blood travel to his face and knew that if he spoke his voice would break. His eyes watered. He wasn't looking at Foreman before but now he stared at the floor deliberately, looking down to make sure he wouldn't see his eyes had gone all glassy. _What the hell is happening to me? Stop it!_

"Chase? Is there something going on that you're not telling me?"

"I don't know," he said. He made an effort to keep his voice cold and emotionless, but couldn't be sure if he'd succeeded. He had so many things he wanted to say, but his mouth didn't listen to him anymore. The words he wanted seemed stuck in the tip of his tongue. At some point they had stopped walking, and only now did Chase realize they had gone into one of the empty clinic rooms, and at least felt reassured no one else was watching their exchange. "I know there's something wrong." He admitted for the first time. "But there's no reason. No reason at all." His voice at last sounded soft and controlled.

"Chase, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but have you thought about seeing a psychiatrist?" said Foreman. He knew Foreman might say something like that. He knew he was right, too. But that part of his mind that had been fighting for control took over again, and in his mind he saw Foreman take a step closer to him. The Foreman he imagined now wore scrubs instead of a suit, and grabbed his wrists and tried to take him to the ground, waving a syringe filled with haldol. _You're going to be put away_ , his voice said, slightly distorted. Chase took a step back and crashed against the wall, shaking the vivid image from his mind. Foreman was now back in his suit.

But for a second, the other Foreman had been real.

"No. No. I won't fall for it," he said. Foreman looked confused.

"Chase, I'm just trying to help..."

"Look, I don't need your help. I don't. So just leave me alone."

He turned to leave and pushed the door so hard it hit the wall on the other side and it almost hit him back. There was nothing wrong with him. He wasn't crazy.

He rushed away from the room and felt lightheaded, but he pushed without stopping on until after he was out of sight. He started to feel the beginning of a headache pulsing on the side of his head and behind his eyes. As he walked towards the parking lot, he saw every one of the fluorescents above him start to flicker, as if his presence was somehow disrupting the flow of electricity. It didn't feel like an odd thing, though. He felt powerful.

The drive back to his apartment felt impossibly fast, but by the time he got there it was already dark. He'd had no breakfast and only a small bite for lunch, and only when he stepped back home did he realized how hungry he was. His energy suddenly full, he decided to cook.

Most cupboards were empty, though. He'd forgotten how little he'd been eating the last couple of weeks, and it hadn't even occurred to him to go shopping for groceries. Water started to boil on the teapot, and he made himself some tea while he thought of what to order on the phone. He probably sat there for a long time, but somehow making a decision proved impossible. There was so much to choose from that the possibilities overwhelmed him, and then it was so late it was no longer worth the effort. He wasn't that hungry anyway.

It was only nine but the street outside was quiet. He took the sleeping pills and positioned himself in front of the TV but didn't turn it on. In the kitchen, his cellphone rang. He scrambled up, almost tumbling to the kitchen to fetch it, but by the time he got there the call had disconnected.

 _That's weird_ , he thought. He couldn't find a trace of the missing call anywhere. A few minutes later the phone rang again and again he missed it by a second, even though this time it was right beside him. It was only then that he realized the ring tone was wrong. It sounded exactly like the phone they had in his father's house. And he always kept his phone in vibrate.

In his head, he heard his own voice trying to make sense of it. _I'm not imagining this. I'm just tired. I just need to sleep. No one is calling. Who's calling? What do they want? Why don't they show their number? No. Stop this._ His thoughts were disorganised, overlapping each other, pulsing at the side of his head like he'd received a blow to his temples.

All of a sudden, he heard the TV make a low, grumbling noise.

He knew he hadn't turned it on, and in a rush of panic he turned, ready to find an intruder messing around with him. But there was no one there. The TV was still off. He looked around, and the room around him seemed to pulse with every breath, as if slowly expanding and contracting. Chase rubbed at his eyes.

 _This isn't happening. Someone's messing with me. This is just a joke._

But then there was a connection, and it all seemed to make sense. It had started with the EEG, and now it was in his apartment. Of course. There was something here that was causing all of this, some bug, some machine, and he just needed to find it.

Calmly, almost methodically, he began to disassemble the lighting fixtures in the living room lamps. He didn't stop to question himself. A part of him knew that what he was doing made no sense, but his actions were driven by something else, and he felt compelled to rip out the wires from their casings and unscrew remotes and switches. It felt almost like an instinct. When he found nothing there, he rammed a screwdriver to the side of the DVD player, breaking the plastic in the process. He found nothing.

With every broken appliance he grew more agitated, and the pulsing in his head began to match the pulsing of the room. Everything he touched seemed to move. Everything was alive. Even looking at the coffee table, from an angle, it seemed to be breathing on its own, taking long heaves, growing bigger each time. He couldn't do this on his own, he realized. He needed help. His phone was still intact, so he resolved to make a call before it too was shut down.

 **A/N: Another chapter sooner than I was planning! Hope you enjoy this, and please let me know what you think! As always it's great to hear from you, thanks for reading!**


	5. Chapter 5

Foreman heard the phone ringing in his sleep for a while before he actually woke up. He fished through the blankets, getting tangled in the charging cable, and picked up without even checking the caller ID.

"Hello?"

"Foreman." Foreman's blood chilled. He couldn't tell why, but Chase's voice suddenly made his hair stand on end. Something was very wrong.

"Chase? What's going on, why are you calling so late?" he asked, as calmly as he could. He heard Chase breathe into the receiver.

"Foreman, I need you to come over. I can't explain over the phone. Just come."

"Chase, are you alright?"

"Just come," and then the line went dead. When he tried calling again, it went straight to voicemail. He jumped out of bed and started getting dressed, adrenaline pumping hard through his body. When he got to his car, he dialled House.

"Someone better be dying" he picked up, voice groggy.

"House, I just got a call from Chase saying I need to go to his apartment. Didn't say why. I'm on my way there right now."

"How did he sound?"

"I don't know. Sketchy."

"I'm on my way."

Foreman was knocking the door to Chase's place 10 minutes later. He'd considered waiting for House, but then thought back to Chase's voice, and how desperate and weird he'd sounded. He recalled their last conversation in the hospital earlier that day. He knew something was wrong then, but he hadn't done anything, and now he kept replaying his words over and over again, trying to figure out what could have gone wrong. In truth, he should have expected something to happen. For weeks, Chase's behaviour had turned more and more erratic, and he'd thought it had been just personal troubles or too much alcohol.

But Chase had never really seemed hungover at work. He'd even called Cameron, and she said they hadn't talked in months. Like he said, there was no reason.

"Foreman, hey," Chase said, opening the door wide to let him through. The inside of the apartment was dark, and having been there only once before, Foreman couldn't immediately tell if anything was off, but then the light from the hallway hit Chase as he walked towards him and he froze. He was barefoot, wearing a grey t-shirt and dark sweatpants. On his left side, just under his ribs, a hole was oozing blood, pouring all over his side and down to his left foot, so that every step he took left a bloody print on the laminated floor. The entire side of his shirt was soaking wet and sticking to his body. Both his hands were bloody, and even in the blue light he could tell his face was also stained where he had rubbed at his eyes. Foreman took a step back.

"Oh my God, Chase. What happened? We need to go to the hospital."

Chase's eyes widened in a look of terror, and he shook his head.

"No! No hospital," he said, putting his hands out for emphasis. His gaze travelled around the room, as if searching for something, and he paused to look behind his back. Foreman took a deep breath and tried to remain calm.

"Why? What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't remember."

"Chase, you're bleeding, you don't remember what happened?"

"No, no, you don't understand, this isn't my blood."

Foreman paused. Through the hole in Chase's shirt, he could clearly see the way the skin broke and blood kept pouring out.

"Whose blood is it?" he asked cautiously.

"The bug. I killed it."

"What bug? Chase you're not making any sense!"

"It makes perfect sense!" He shouted. Foreman could sense his agitation growing, but the look in his eyes was crazed, like he wasn't truly there "Are you going to help me or not?"

"I can't help you, Chase, you need to go to the hospital," Foreman fiddled with his phone in his pocket, but he knew better than to take it out on front of Chase. He couldn't dial the police without unlocking it and didn't want to risk it. Chase appeared to be in a sort of psychotic break, and whatever he had used to dig that hole on his side could hurt him too. He watched him rub at his face, spreading more of his own blood across. He was unrecognisable, as if transformed into someone else, someone capable of hurting himself and others. With the pale light that poured from the street, Chase looked like he was plucked out of a horror movie, and Foreman had to fight the urge to run away.

"The hospital can't help me, I need to get it out myself." He said, then raised his shirt to inspect the wound. It was bigger that he thought, and appeared to be a series of horizontal slashes, that had been twisted into a mangled mess.

"Chase..." Foreman said, growing more and more desperate. "I left my bag in my car, I'm going to go get it. Stay here alright?"

Slowly, he backed out, and as soon as he got to the hallway he dialed House.

"I'm five minutes out, you get there already?"

"House, you need to call 911, right now."

"What's going on?"

"He's in some sort of psychosis, he's hurt himself and bleeding pretty badly."

"Alright. I'll be there in a sec."

Foreman stepped back inside the room with hesitance. He couldn't see Chase immediately, so he followed the bloody footprints to the edge of the living room.

"Where's your bag?" Chase asked, standing still from the edge of the bedroom door. Foreman couldn't help but jump away, almost skidding with a puddle of blood that had dripped below.

"Jesus, Chase," he said, recovering. "It wasn't there, I left it back home. I thought I had it with me. Chase, we need to go to the hospital, you need help."

Chase huffed, and looked back at him with frustration.

"I can't go to the hospital, Foreman. I won't."

Foreman knew he wasn't just being stubborn. He'd spotted the broken fixtures and the strewn glass coming from the bathroom. Whatever world Chase was at, he wasn't seeing what Foreman saw. He was terrified, probably not even aware of the damage he'd done to himself. Though his face was pale and sweaty, he didn't move as if he was in any pain.

"At least let me look at that," he said motioning to his side "Maybe it's not that bad."

Chase relaxed a little, and let him get close and kneel to look at the gash on his side. Foreman's hand got stained as he moved the shirt away. The wound was deep, and it was still bleeding. He reckoned he'd lost about a litre of blood, and would probably need a transfusion. He looked back at Chase before he dared touching him, but there was no reaction. He was about to wipe the area down with a towel before the door swung open and House stepped in. Chase immediately backed away, pulling down the edge of his shirt.

"What's he doing here?" he said, his voice hushed and tense.

"I called him, he can help."

"No," he said, and took another step back. He stretched his right hand across his body to cover his side.

"Whoah, something tells me I arrived at an awkward moment," said House.

"Tell him to get out," Chase told Foreman.

"Chase, it's House, he can help."

"No, that is not House! He's tricking you, can't you see?"

"Chase, calm down."

"Don't you fucking tell me to calm down!" he yelled. Foreman thought he could make out an ambulance siren in the distance. "Can't you see?"

Then Chase lunged away from them, stumbling into the kitchen and grabbing a pair of scissors lying in the counter. They were already bloody, but still Foreman was thankful he hadn't reached for a knife.

"Whoah, Chase, put that down."

"Step back," he said. His voice was serious, without a hint of doubt. House and Foreman exchange glances, but none of them were prepared to fight him. The sound of the ambulance siren grew closer. Any minute now. Standing still, House turned back to Chase.

"Chase. You're going through psychosis. You've lost a lot of blood and it's making you see and think things that aren't there. Put the scissors down."

"Shut up! And I told you to step back. I don't even know what you're doing here."

"Chase, listen to yourself!" said Foreman.

Then, as if a spell was broken, Chase dropped the scissors, which fell and bounced against the counter before settling at House's feet. He then clutched at his side, looking down as if just realising he was hurt. His face contracted in pain, and he looked around dazed. His breathing became short and fast.

"What is happening to me?" he said, and for the first time made eye contact. Foreman was ready to step forward, but then Chase's body tensed, his arms closing in on his chest, and his eyes looked away. His head turned to the side in an unnatural angle, and a second later he tumbled to the floor.

"Grab his head," House called, then kneeled beside him. Foreman left House holding him while he grabbed a pillow from the sofa and placed it under his neck. Together they turned him to his side just in time for the stiffness in his body to give way to twitches and then the jerks of a full blown seizure.

House looked outside and saw the red and blue lights of the ambulance.

"They're downstairs, get them to come inside." he said. Foreman left Chase seizing and ran towards the the door. He'd gone down one floor when he ran into the paramedics.

"This way," he said, and turned back around.

"What happened?" one of them asked.

"He was in a psychotic break, he's got a puncture wound on his abdomen, and now he's gone into a tonic clonic seizure," Foreman said.

"Are you a doctor?" the other paramedic asked.

"Yes. And so is he."

Chase was still on the floor, and now blood trickled from his mouth down his chin. His eyes were wide open and his hands were twisted backwards. The paramedics slid in the hard board beside him, standing clear of his kicking legs.

"Has he had a seizure before?"

"Not that we know of."

The paramedic made a fist and stuck a syringe on Chase's thigh. Within a couple of seconds the jerks had subsided and his body twitched mildly. An oxygen mask was pulled over his face and his body was pushed into the stretcher, then lifted up to gurney.

"You go with him, I'll meet you there" Foreman said, rushing downstairs, passing the stretcher and heading towards his car. House stayed with Chase, whose body was now limp on the gurney, and his eyes were finally closed. His mind raced. Before the seizure, he had been ready to accept that Chase was having a breakdown. He would have even considered a more complex psychiatric disorder like schizophrenia, even though he was a little over the age range for diagnosis. Now he couldn't be sure. He sat next to him on the ambulance, and watched over as the paramedics apply pressure to his side and assessed the damage. They cut open the front of his shirt, tossed the soaked remains aside, and hooked him up to fluids. The heart rate monitor revealed a fast but stable pulse. House didn't say a word until they reached the hospital.

Foreman was already there when they wheeled him in. For the first time, they both saw his body under the harsh lights of the emergency room. His skin was a pale grey and both his face and hair streaked with red. If they hadn't known better, they might have thought he was dead.

 **A/N: Thank you all for reading! It was great hearing your theories haha, the mystery continues! Let me know what you think!**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Hope you had a good weekend! Here's a longer chapter for you. We're just about at halfway point by now.**

 _He heard the thumping before he saw anything. It was a regular, deep sound that seemed to make the walls shake and his ears vibrate. It sped up gradually, until he could hear nothing else, and he saw what little light still remain in the room disappear as if swallowed away by the crack under the door._

 _"_ _Look at you," a voice said, and even though it was heavily distorted it sounded familiar. The cloaked figure walked to the side of the bed and stood next to him. As it got closer, Chase felt a cold air reaching him from the window, even though it was closed. "So weak. So alone."_

 _He wanted to tell him to shut up, to go away, but fear kept him paralyzed, clutching the sides of the bed as hard as he could. The figure remained still, his red eyes ever unblinking as the thumping continued, but this time accompanied by the movement of his cane, hitting the metal railing repeatedly._

 _"Why are you doing this?" he asked, aware that his voice was low and rough, but he knew he would hear him. He'd felt the monster inside his head, taking away his words, quieting his voice and tricking his mind into seeing things that weren't there._

 _The man with no face twisted himself into a coil of smoke, and the thumping stopped._

 _"_ _I'm not doing anything, Chase," he said. "This is all you."_

*/*/*

House and Foreman gathered back at in the diagnostics office. Away from the emergency room the hospital was calm, the lights dim. Silently, Foreman made coffee and poured two cups before sitting back at the table. It was four in the morning, and the sun was still at least four hours away, but both doctors knew sleep wouldn't be an option.

Chase had been wheeled into the OR to fix the wound on his side. There was some internal bleeding to take care of but the surgeon assured them it was minor and he would recover fully. But that's not what they were worried about. The files from the previous day's bout of tests were sprawled over the table, but none of them showed anything amiss, so there was no point in putting Chase through another round of testing. They knew he'd had a seizure, they'd seen it. They had to look for other options.

"What about post-ictal psychosis?" said Foreman

"He had the seizure after the psychosis, not before."

"He could've been having small seizures."

"The EEG would've picked them up. His symptoms started before."

House then stood up towards the board. He flipped it, and erased part of their last theory so that it only read 'seizures', then wrote psychosis/paranoia underneath.

"What about infection?" he said.

"Didn't show in the CBC"

"It's definitely in the brain. Did the neuro do a physical?"

"No. We'll have to wait until he's awake again. ER is doing a full toxicology workup, too."

House stood up.

"I'm going to sleep, let me know when he gets out. Let's do a full neuro and physical. Take a history, too."

/

House woke up with the sound of the door opening and an immediate "Jesus! House.." from Wilson. Light was already shining through the blinds, and he sat up from the couch.

"What are you doing here? You scared the hell out of me."

"Your couch is much better than the one in the lounge," he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and reaching out for his phone.

"I mean why are you sleeping in the hospital? Didn't you go home?"

"I did, came back around 4 this morning. Me and Foreman brought Chase, he had a seizure."

Wilson paused. It wasn't the answer he was expecting. House looked down and scrolled through various messages from Foreman. It was still early, and the rest of the team wasn't due in for another hour.

"Is he alright?"

House sighed. "He called Foreman in the middle of the night. He had dug a hole in his abdomen because he thought he had a bug inside and he was screaming something about me not being me. There was blood all over the place. Then the seizure. So... no. He's not alright."

"Oh my God... Oh my God, House, are you serious?"

"Yup. He got out of surgery an hour ago, but hasn't woken up yet."

"You're not going to go see him? Are you taking his case?"

"I'm waiting on some tests. They did a workup yesterday but no physical, no history…"

"House, don't be ridiculous, come on, let's go see him."

Wilson left his bag next to his desk and headed for the door. Only when he was gone and House could no longer hear his footsteps did he rise to follow him. The lack of sleep from the previous night made his leg ache and his limp more pronounced. Still, the path towards the PACU, where Chase was, felt shorter than usual. Foreman had texted him again, saying Chase was waking up soon, and he half expected to find that he was back to his normal self, like the seizure had been a reset and now he was alright.

He spotted Foreman on the other side of the glass walls, but Chase' face was turned. Foreman looked up as he neared the door, and stood up to intercept him.

"About time you showed up."

"Sorry. Beauty sleep, you know?"

Foreman sighed, then closed the door behind him as he stepped into the hallway. He took a breath before speaking.

"He seems fine..."

"But..."

"I mean, he's aware. I did a physical and he was a little lethargic and had some trouble eye tracking but otherwise fine. He didn't say much, other than he doesn't remember what happened."

"Ok, that can all be explained by the seizure. What else?"

Foreman hesitated.

"Nothing else. It all looks normal."

"So what, you think he's epileptic? What about the behavioral issues?"

"Maybe they're not connected. Or part of the seizures."

"They have to be connected. Haven't you learned anything?"

"House…"

But House pushed past him and opened the door to the room. Chase had his back towards him, so he banged the rails of the bed with his cane, making him flinch slightly. He started to turn just as House pressed a button to raise the bed to a reclining position. He had no mask on, but a faint bruise was visible on his left cheek where he'd crashed against the floor, and the bags under his eyes were as pronounced as ever.

"What do you want?" he said.

"So that's how you thank me for bringing you in at four in the morning?" This made Chase pause, and he looked at Foreman for confirmation. House turned back towards him. "Oh, so you forgot to mention me? Well, can't say I'm surprised."

"House." Foreman's tone was warning.

"I've told Foreman, I don't remember what happened," Chase said.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"I don't know, I was in my apartment… I can't say exactly."

"So you don't remember calling Foreman?"

"No."

"Or going all John Nash on the lighting fixtures?"

"No. Wait, what?"

"You trashed your apartment."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did, sometime between dismantling your DVD player and stabbing yourself with a pair of scissors."

Chase's face was grave, and House could almost see what little colour he had draining out of his face. His chest rose and fell a couple of times before he replied.

"I'm not crazy."

Foreman cut in. "We don't think you're crazy, Chase. You had a seizure."

"The EEG was negative"

"That just means you weren't seizing at that moment."

"So, what, I'm epileptic? Post-ictal psychosis, is that what you're saying?"

"Have you had a seizure before?"

"No."

"Any drugs we should know about? Alcohol?"

Chase huffed angrily and looked at Foreman. "No. I already answered all these questions."

"House, a word?"

They left the room, then walked a little to the side so they were out of sight of the ICU.

"You can't attack him like that."

"What? Those were regular questions."

"You know what I mean, House."

"And you know _me_. What were you expecting?"

Foreman sighed. He knew he was on a losing battle trying to get House to show some compassion.

"House, you've been in his place. Remember what it felt like. And we don't even know why this time."

House broke eye contact for a second, and Foreman knew that was as close as an apology that he was going to get.

"Did you get the tox screen back?" he said, changing the subject.

"Not yet."

"Let me know when you have it."

House walked back into the conference room expecting it to be empty. He'd left Wilson in the ICU making some mindless conversation with Chase, and missed the fact that it was already mid morning, and he was supposed to be working.

"House. Where were you?" said Taub even before he laid down his cane. House ignored him and walked towards the white board that still showed their last patient's symptoms. He flipped it, revealing the set of symptoms he had discussed with Foreman.

"MRI, CBC, thyroid panel were clean. Go."

"Who's the patient?" asked Park.

"White male, mid thirties."

Then Adams, "What about his history?"

"Only a broken arm as a kid. Presented with irritability lasting about two weeks, followed by insomnia at night and daytime oversleeping. Then short time memory loss, jerky movements, aggression, psychosis, paranoia, grand mal seizure."

"What about now?" Taub said.

"Memory loss of the last 12 hours, lethargic, slow eye movements, still irritable."

"We should do an EEG, it could all be seizure activity." Park said.

"He already had one the same day he had the seizure. It was clean."

"So? Let's get another one."

"Duly noted. Any other ideas, besides epilepsy?"

"Alcohol withdrawal." Park said.

"Seizures could have been triggered by a psychiatric disorder. It's not uncommon in schizophrenia patients," Adams said.

"This is his first seizure."

"That we know of. House, whose case is this? Seems pretty straightforward that we have to look for a seizure disorder."

"It's a favour for Foreman, we don't have any other cases anyways."

"I'm sure you can find something in the piles of files we get-"

"I'll see about the EEG. You guys can work on my clinic hours."

"Wait, we're not going to see the patient?"

"Nope," said House, and crossed towards his own office, then called out before going in. "Taub, a word?"

The girls on the team looked at each other and shook their heads. House knew they probably did not believe his excuse that he was doing Foreman a favour, but trusted they would not inquire further. He needed them to stay objective if this was to become a more complex case, even though nothing in the history suggested otherwise. But for Taub, it was different. Knowing him, he would be far more motivated to work on the case if he knew what was going on, and he needed someone who would make sure the tests got run. He realised they would soon figure out who the patient was, but the later the better.

"What's up, House?"

"This patient of ours..." House started, raising his feet over the table "It's Chase."

"You're kidding."

"He's in the PACU, if you want to go say hi, though I'll warn you he's not that friendly lately."

"Shit, House, when did this happen?"

"Last night."

"Damn. Now that you mention it he has seemed kinda out of it the past couple of weeks."

"Out of of it is an understatement. He stabbed himself thinking there was bug buried under his skin."

"You didn't mention that in the differential."

"I said he was psychotic and paranoid. The fact that he hurt himself is irrelevant."

"House, but this is Chase, it's clearly not irrelevant!"

"For you, maybe."

"I can't believe this. How can you be this calm? How is he now? Why aren't we with him?"

"He's lucid. Back to his irritable self." In his pocket, House's pager rang. "Talking about wonder boy..."

"What's going on?"

"Don't know. Let's go" he said, and started walking outside.

They heard the shouts before they got to the PACU, and hurried up the pace.

"Chase, come on, you'll rip out your stitches!" Foreman said, followed by clatter of plastic hitting the floor. Up ahead, Chase had pushed a tower of files down and was now guarding himself behind the admissions desk.

"Hey!" House called towards Foreman. "What's going on?"

On the other side, a nurse grabbed Chase and tried to get him into a safe position on the floor, but the young doctor thrashed against him, then pushed him away and stood with his back to the corner.

"I need to get out of here," he said. His voice was calm but his breathing agitated. House walked closer, leaving Taub besides Foreman. He heard the heaving in his chest, noticed the thin sheen of sweat in his face and how his eyes would not lock with his. Last night's Chase was back.

He asked, "Why do you need to go?"

"I just do. Don't come any closer."

"Or what? You're going to hit me with one of these binders? That'll be fun."

"Shut up."

"You're bleeding. You need to get back to the room."

Chase looked down. Poppy red marks were showing through the hospital gown.

"This is not my blood."

"Whose is it then?"

He laughed then, a strange, choking, sob-like laugh.

"I know what's real. I can see it. You can't trick me."

"Chase, there's no trick."

Chase's gaze went back to Foreman.

"Stop that"

"Stop what?" Foreman said.

"What are you seeing?" House asked, getting back his attention. He stared at him, and House could tell that he _knew_ what he was experiencing wasn't quite right, an inkling that it was his mind that was playing the trick. But he wouldn't admit it.

"Nothing."

A small crowd had gathered to watch their exchange. The stain on Chase's gown had spread, and a few drops fell to the floor. Chase paused to look down again, and a grin formed on his face. "You must think it's so funny" he said, and chuckled.

"What's funny?" said House.

Chase's face contorted into a wide smile. It looked forced, unnatural. His arms, previously holding on to the edge of the counter, came to rest at his side, and his shoulders rose towards his ears to rest in an uncomfortable position. By this point, both Foreman House knew what was coming, and so when his legs gave out they stopped his head from banging against the floor and pulled him quickly to his side before the jerks began.

"Did you give him anything?" House asked, pulling Chase's legs away from the fallen binders.

"No, nothing. "

"We need to get him on anticonvulsants." He stood up to let the attending take over. Chase's hands twisted into an awkward angle, and his eyes remained wide open. House addressed the crowd "Show's over folks," then followed them back into the room.

"I'm ordering a transfer to the third floor," said Foreman, with his hands still holding Chase's head over the gurney. With a quick push, they had him back on the bed. The nurse waited until the twitches passed before reconnecting the IV. She had to do it on the opposite arm this time, House noticed, because his left was bleeding from where he had ripped the needle out moments before. Chase had stopped moving except for his rising chest, and his eyes had finally closed. If last time was any indication, he'd probably stay in that half-conscious state for a while before actually being lucid again.

 **A/N: As always thanks for reading! Sorry if this is an awkward end for a chapter but I didn't write the fic thinking in chapters. I've really enjoyed reading your comments and theories, keep them coming! See you again before the end of the week.**


	7. Chapter 7

"We're missing something." House said. Taub and Foreman had joined him on the cafeteria for lunch, the first meal he'd had that day.

"I'm sending him to another EEG once he's awake and stable. Two seizures and a positive EEG is enough to confirm epilepsy." said Foreman.

"It's not epilepsy. It doesn't make any sense."

"Shouldn't we call someone? What about his family?" said Taub, but Foreman ignored him, and kept his focus on his former boss.

"Then what makes sense, House? This is the most logical explanation."

"You're just saying epilepsy because you're a neurologist. And Chase hasn't got any family, they're all dead."

"He's showing neurological symptoms! He hasn't got a fever, MRI's clean, bloodwork's clean, tox screen's negative..."

"Friends then? What about Cameron, shouldn't someone tell her?"

"So he goes from healthy to two grandmal seizures in two days? No infection, no history, no head trauma? I'm not buying it."

"I've called Thirteen, she's coming over. I haven't talked to Cameron yet, but I will. I mean, I don't know of anybody else really. What other theories do you have then, House? You don't think it's epilepsy, then what?" said Foreman. A couple of tables nearby turned towards them as the conversation grew more agitated.

"The MRI must have missed something."

"It didn't, you've seen it."

"Let's do a PET scan then. And a spinal tap."

"Since when is Chase your patient? He hasn't given consent."

"Since when is he yours? He definitely didn't consent to you moving him to neurology."

"Guys, should we take this to the office?" Taub interrupted, noticing how their voices carried in the crowded room. The doctors stood up to leave but the banter continued.

"His primary care doctor is an internist in Australia who died six years ago. He hasn't updated his info since he came to work for you." explained Foreman.

"Who's his proxy, then?"

"Cameron."

"Well, why isn't she here, then? What are you waiting for?"

"I thought he would be fine when I saw him today, didn't think it was necessary. I'll call her today. Wait, what are you doing?"

House had stopped walking and had pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and started to type. "House?"

"I'm calling her."

"No, House! Come on, don't be such a dick."

"He needs a spinal tap and if you won't authorise it she will."

"Are you crazy?"

"Hi, Cameron?"

"He's joking, he's not actually calling her," said Taub.

"Cameron, Chase was admitted yesterday with seizures and paranoia. He's unconscious and we don't know what's wrong. You're still his medical proxy, we need authorisation to do a spinal tap." House delivered the information without a change in tone or a pause for effect, his words direct and clinical. Then, to prove his point, he put his phone on speaker.

"What? Are you serious?" said Cameron over the phone.

"Pretty serious."

"House, let me talk to her," Foreman said, reaching out for the phone, but House pulled away.

"Do we have your consent or not?" There was a pause on the end of the line, then Cameron said, "For a spinal tap, yes but House-"

"That's all we need thank you."

House hung up the phone and put it away, and carried on walking towards his office under the shocked eyes of Taub and Foreman. They heard his phone ring no more than ten seconds afterwards, but House didn't pick up. He only spoke again when they were back at diagnostics.

"Taub, make sure he's scheduled for a PET scan," he said. "Did they do a new EEG already?"

"Should be done by now," said Foreman.

"Ok. Let's go then."

House stopped next to the door leading to Chase's room. He could barely see through the blinds that covered the glass, and so couldn't really tell if his employee was awake. Cameron had called five more times, then stopped and called Foreman instead, who was still speaking to her half an hour later. Meanwhile, House poured over the files and the EEG report. He followed the spiky lines of Chase's brainwaves as they went from the haywire state of post seizure to the low peaks of shallow sleep. New theories formed in his head, but he needed to see Chase first.

"She's coming tomorrow," said Foreman, finally putting his phone away as he walked towards him.

"Figured as much. She's a lost case, that one."

"Did you look at the EEG?"

"Yeah, he had a seizure alright. I need you to do another neuro exam."

"Right now? I did one yesterday."

"I think this one's going to be different"

House pushed the door and walked inside the room. He did a double take when he saw Chase lying in the bed, but recovered quickly. He stood to the side and let Foreman approach him to check up on his state. He knew just by looking at him then that the results of the test wouldn't be normal. Chase failed to react when Foreman called his name, and only opened his eyes when he was shaken by the shoulder, then sat up reluctantly, but didn't say a word. His eyes were sullen and his face pale gray. His hair, which needed a haircut, looked dirty and stood on end in a tangled mess. But more than anything, it was the way his eyes didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular, as if just staring into the empty air in front of him.

"Chase? How are you holding up?" Foreman said. Chase turned his head to look out the window, but the day outside was foggy, and the city was covered in grey. He kept quiet. "Do you know what happened?" Foreman asked again.

"I had a seizure," he said, still with his face towards the window.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Chase rubbed his eyes. He was now out of the hospital gown and changed into a grey shirt and black sweatpants that Foreman had lended him, and now looked too big. Without changing his gaze, he shrugged.

"This is serious," Foreman tugged at his shoulder, trying to get him to pay attention. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Why do you care? You already got what you wanted," he said.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know."

"No, I don't. I want to get you out of here Chase, but I need you to help out here."

"I'm not supposed to be here," he said, still his face towards the window, but Foreman was nevertheless relieved he was calm and showed no signs of his previous aggression.

"Can you look at me? I just want to do a neuro test," Foreman said, while House, still looking from a few meters away, stepped closer. Slowly, Chase turned his head to face Foreman.

"But tell him to not come any closer." he said.

"What, me?" House said, and took another step forward, taunting him. Chase flinched, almost falling to the other side of the bed.

"I said, step the fuck back! Tell him to stay back!" he said, and Foreman looked at House pleading until he obliged. Keeping his voice down, Foreman said, "Chase, it's just House, he's helping out."

"No, no, no, that's not him." Then, barely audible. "You're falling for it. Can't you see?."

Foreman took a deep breath, then turned to look at House, who was keeping a hard gaze on Chase, and decided not to press the issue.

"Ok, can you look at me? Can you follow my finger?"

House watched as Chase's struggled to follow Foreman's movement, instead moving his head whenever he wanted to change direction. When he asked him to raise his arms over his head, he did so slowly and mechanically. When he asked him to walk a straight line, it seemed as though his legs moved through jelly. He watched his fellow's face and he could see him start to realise that something was very wrong with him. Even though his mind played tricks on him, some part of his real self remained. He couldn't remember the three words Foreman had asked him to repeat back to him, and though he got the dates and the president right, he couldn't name more than five words that started with the letter 'f'. At points during the conversation, he almost seemed completely normal, only to fall back into some paranoid delusion shortly after. Then, in a moment of clarity, he looked straight at House.

"It's not epilepsy," he said.

"What is it, then?" said House, and just as Chase's muscles started to tense and the heart monitor beeped with a heart rate increase.

"You have to cut into my head." His jaw clenched, his wrists turned upwards and he slid a little down into the bed. "It's the only way."

"What do you mean?" House asked, but Chase didn't respond, turning his head again to face the window.

 **A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! I really enjoy reading what you think so if you can leave a review that'd be awesome! Another chap coming soon!**


	8. Chapter 8

House twirled his cane around while he paced along the conference room. On the whiteboard, below 'seizures', he'd written down the list of symptoms Foreman had identified during the physical the day before. Poor eye mobility, hypotonia, high blood pressure and altered personality among them.

On the table, Foreman sat with Taub and the other fellows.

"Has he had any history of mental illness?" said Adams.

"His mother was an alcoholic, does that count?" said House. "Other than that no."

"He should be evaluated by a psychiatrist" said Park.

"Hellooo, these are actual, physical symptoms!"

"Everything could be explained by schizophrenia."

"But he's in his thirties, he's too old for onset. Plus seizures and high blood pressure due to schizo is a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"

"Maybe he was already diagnosed, and it's gotten worse? Maybe he stopped medication…" Park said.

"No," House said.

"How do you know? Have you checked his house for pills?" she pressed.

"Tox screen was clean."

"That doesn't test for anti psychotics!"

"He's not schizophrenic!" said Foreman. "Guys, I know House didn't tell you this, but this is Chase we're talking about here."

House looked at Foreman accusingly.

Adams shook her head "Wait, WHAT?" Beside her, Park put her hands to her mouth.

"Chase is our patient? Why didn't you tell us?"

"I wanted you to be objective."

Adams said, "Oh, like you're being objective? How come you told Taub?"

"Oh, come on, you've known him for what, a month? We've all known him for years, don't be so dramatic."

"I can't believe this. I have to go see him" she said, beginning to walk towards the door.

"You can't. He's not up for visitors."

"He's our patient!"

"He's unstable and aggressive, trust me, you don't want to see him right now. His ex-wife is on her way, we don't need any more doctors going into his room."

"The differential isn't over," said Foreman. "He hasn't had another seizure since we started him on anticonvulsants, but by any other accounts he appears to be getting worse, with brief periods of lucidity in between.

"Still think it's schizophrenia."

House banged his cane against the glass table, hard, making the fellows flinch. They all knew what was at stake here.

"Schizophrenia is a diagnosis of exclusion. We need options here."

"Meningoencephalitis" said Taub, breaking an awkward silence.

"He hasn't got a fever."

"Prion disease?"

"There's hundreds of prions, which one?"

"House, what about Huntington's?" Foreman said. House grimaced. He had to admit it had crossed his mind.

"First mutation, you mean?"

"The progression's too fast" said Park.

"It's not unheard of. Test him for it, also MS. What about cancer?"

"MRI was clean."

"Could be somewhere else. Paraneoplastic syndrome."

"I'll run his blood through some markers."

"Do a chest x-ray, too."

"Ok."

"Ok, scram." He waited for the fellows to exit, then looked at Foreman. "What happened to the lumbar puncture?"

"It's scheduled for later today. We would need him to be still…"

"So drug him."

"I think it's better if we don't. He should be awake as much as possible. He's been asleep pretty much since I got here this morning."

"But he was awake most of the night."

"It's hard to tell, he hasn't been moving much."

"Is he asleep now?"

"I can't be sure, let's go check up on him."

"Do I have to?"

Foreman didn't bother to reply.

* * *

"I don't know you. You need to leave." Chase's face was red and his words dripped with fear as he pulled himself to the far side of the hospital bed. "Nurse! NURSE! I need help!" He pressed the call button repeatedly, then pulled down the barrier and lowered himself to the floor, half crawling into the small space against the wall, using the bed as a barrier.

"Robert... It's me. It's Allison." Tears streamed through Cameron's face. Foreman had warned her that she wouldn't be seeing the Chase she remembered, but she hadn't expected that he wouldn't _recognize_ her.

"No, you're not. You're not her. I know it, I know you're lying."

"Robert, can't you see me? Look at me. We were married. It's me."

"Stop it."

"Chase..."

"Stop it!"

"Ma'am, maybe you should wait outside." A nurse who'd heard the call was trying to pull Cameron back into the hallway. They'd already had three days to figure out that Chase wasn't going to be an easy patient.

"Get her out. I don't know her."

"Chase, please..."

"Get her out. Get her out!"

Cameron wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve, and looked back at Chase with the most calm face she could fake.

"Fine. I'll be outside." She held the pose and walked with the nurse into the neurology hallway, then sat on the waiting area, too shocked to say anything else.

"He barely even looked at me. It was like he was looking _through_ me. How did this happen?" she asked Foreman when he showed up an hour later.

"He'd been acting weird for weeks. That why I called, remember? But I didn't see this coming either. We still don't know what's wrong, but we're doing some more tests tomorrow, when he's a little calmer."

"What do you think is wrong?"

"I honestly don't know. At first I thought it was something thyroid related, then epilepsy, then bipolar. Now I'm not sure."

"He wasn't faking that. He really didn't know who I was. He looked scared."

"I know. It must be scary."

"I.. I just... Does he have anyone else? I don't feel like I belong here anymore."

"You know the answer to that better than anyone, Allison. If you know of any friends that I don't, go right ahead and call them."

"You know I can't stay here."

"Yeah. I know."

* * *

A week passed, and Chase got into the habit of ripping out his IVs and hiding out under the bed or on the bathroom, until his hands got tied up in thick white gloves so that he couldn't grab at anything. He didn't have another big seizure, but instead a couple small ones throughout the day, and his movements got more and more erratic and his behavior more worrisome. Sometimes he completely dismissed Cameron as a stranger and others he allowed her to be in the room, acknowledging her presence and talking to her directly. He stopped looking people in the eye, and started to need help to eat and brush his teeth. Some days he didn't speak a single word.

House had the fellows start him on treatment for NMS, meaning his symptoms were caused by one of the drugs given when he had his first seizure, even though he'd never heard of a case with such a marked personality change, and they'd attributed his other symptoms to viral encephalitis.

People had stopped visiting, fearing one of his outbursts or just the awkward silence that followed when he refused to speak or even acknowledge a visitor. His paranoia had turned down by the end of the week, but he still occasionally mentioned being followed or being watched, or the walls moving or his IV being poison.

The team took another patient, but House still met with Foreman and the neurology department to discuss the case, and he had Thirteen and Taub to keep him company most days. He still doubted the diagnosis, but the last couple of days Chase had shown no decline, so he couldn't be sure.

 **A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! Just three more chaps + an epilogue left in this so hang in there with me! As always let me know what you think!**


	9. Chapter 9

_The dirt road ahead shined in the blue light of midnight, and the old jeep twisted and turned in a long zig zag up the mountain. His foot was on the accelerator, but the car didn't seem to be able to push past thirty miles an hour no matter how much he pressed. Behind him, he heard a laugh._

 _"_ _You're never going to make it," his mother said._

 _"_ _How do you know that?"_

 _"_ _I just do."_

 _"_ _Well, fuck you then."_

 _He made a hard turn, and the car pushed through another steep climb. Below, small lights dotted the road that they'd passed, and tiny moving lights pinpointed the cars ahead of them on the climb. The mountain was nearly vertical, and impossibly high._

 _Chase felt his shoulders grow stiff with the tension of driving, and a growing cold started to freeze the edges of the windshield. He shivered._

 _"_ _You shouldn't have come here." his mother said, this time staring right at him from the shotgun seat._

 _"_ _Why? Why do you care where I go, or what I do? You lost that right years ago."_

 _"_ _You'll die. And no one will remember who you were, or what you did."_

 _"_ _Then what would you have me do?" he said, and his voice trembled. Up ahead, there was another turn._

 _"_ _Wake up, Rob. Nobody's going to do this for you." He turned to look at her, and her blond hair lit up with another car's headlights. There was no time to brake in the small one-way road, and so he made a hard turn into the abyss._

 _***/***/***_

Shouts sounded from the other side of the door.

"Chase, open the door!"

"Robert, please!"

He pressed his back against the shower tiles, resting his cheek on the cold ceramic and curling his legs so that they fitted in the cramped space. He wanted to stand up, but at the same time couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd locked himself after he felt the space in the room had started to shrink, and now the same thing was happening with the bathroom. Any minute now, the ceiling would collapse against the floor and he would be crushed. There was no way he would be able to open the door.

The voices outside got quiet, then he heard "Chase step back from the door", probably Foreman's voice, and then a bang as the door jumped from its hinges and crashed against the sink. Cameron rushed to him.

"Oh my God, are you alright?"

He didn't answer, didn't even try to look at her. The sound of her voice felt muted.

"Robert! What's wrong? Please, tell us!"

Still, he kept quiet, until he saw someone push her out of the way. House.

"Stand up, you idiot!"

"House, that's not helping."

"Oh and you are?"

Chase said "Shut up, both of you, I'm standing."

They looked back at him while he grabbed the metal rail from the shower and hoisted himself up. When Cameron tried to help, he waved her off. The room didn't seem like it was shrinking anymore, but he still saw everything as if washed in shadows. No light was bright enough to see clearly. He tried to look at their faces but saw nothing but dark blurs. He felt them hovering over him, and he looked back, annoyed.

"Don't you have anything else to do? Besides… watching me? Go piss off."

"Robert… we're just trying..."

"Stop it!" He stared at her, eyes squinting slightly. "Why are you even here?"

"Rob..."

"Don't call me that. You don't get to call me that." He felt his face blush with anger and hate. She was the last person he wanted to see, and even here she was trying to put on her best act, her caregiver act. He didn't buy it.

"I just want to help."

"No you don't. You just want to make yourself feel better."

"That's not true, you know that..." she said, but then her voice rang clear again, though her lips stayed still.

 _"_ _I never loved you. No one has ever loved you,"_ he heard her say. He took a step back and leaned against the sink, suddenly dizzy. _How could she say that?_

"Chase, just come back to the bed" Foreman said, and Cameron once again tried to grab his arm and lead him out.

 _"_ _They're going to lock you up, and no one is coming to help you,"_ she said again, getting dangerously close.

"No, no, don't touch me!" he said, then turned to Foreman "Get her away from me."

 _"_ _It's over, Robert. You've been a fellow for how long? You were never meant to amount to anything."_

"Shut up," he said. House and Foreman exchanged looks of concern. "Go away, all of you."

 _"You'll always be alone."_

He stumbled out of the bathroom back into the room. For a second, he debated making a run to the hallway outside, but he was still hooked to an IV and he didn't trust his legs anymore, so he just returned to the room.

"Chase, come on, sit down." Foreman said, but his voice was drowned by Cameron's words as they echoed in his head.

"Don't know if you've noticed, Chase," House said, standing in the doorway. Cameron had disappeared. "But over here we've been trying to help you."

"I don't - I don't need your help."

"Have you looked around? You're in the freaking hospital, you've been here for two weeks now. If you don't want us asking for a transfer to the psychiatric ward you better grow the hell up."

"I'm not crazy."

"Really? Do you really believe that? Because I've been where you are, and I'm not so sure."

"I'm not crazy," he said again, but this time he felt his voice breaking. All of a sudden, he felt the hospital room disappear, and saw himself standing as if looking at himself from above. The room went dark, shadows starting to appear from the corners, then spreading like tentacles across the room. He was back in his body, but no longer in control, and he felt his throat burning and tears coming to his eyes. He felt them running down his cheeks, feeling again like he was being possessed. Then came the sobs, and his chest shook and his hands went up to cover his face. And he saw House just standing there, his image alternating with that of the cloaked man in the shadows, staring at him with bright red eyes, and he cried even harder. It was like a dream, and this messed up version of himself wouldn't wake up, while the real him, the real Chase, was trapped behind a glass watching it unfold, unable to say anything.

Maybe he really was crazy.

He stood there until his legs gave out, and his swaying led him to bump hard against the wall and slide down to the floor. He let himself be led back to the bed, but he was no longer paying attention to what anybody was saying. All he heard was whispers, and he nodded from time to time, but never actually understood any words. He felt his eyelids droop and his vision tunnel, and a strange tingling sensation ran throughout his body.

 **A/N: Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I did writing it! I'll be away this weekend but you can expect a big update on Sunday! Only 3 chaps left to this story! As always it's great hearing from you :)**


	10. Chapter 10

_He was falling. For a moment, he felt the rough leather of the wheel but his body shook and he had to let go. The car tumbled down, and Chase felt himself held back by the seatbelt, still being violently turned around, deafened by the sound of metal grinding against rock. Then the grinding stopped, and instead his stomach turned as he found himself facing a steep, clear drop into the black void._

 _But nothing happened. The seatbelt's pressure dissolved and he found himself lying down in cold grass. To his sides, rocks rose like steep walls, enclosing the bottom of the valley._

 _"_ _Looks like the doctor can't even save himself. All those years, and for what?"_

 _In front of him, a faint shadow spoke with his father's voice. "What are you going to do now?"_

 _Chase pushed himself up to his elbows, surprised that he was still in one piece._

 _"_ _This isn't my fault," he said. His father's shadow moved ahead, making circles around him._

 _"_ _It may not be your fault, but it is you who's doing this."_

 _"_ _I'm not doing anything"._

 _"_ _Yes you are. You are, but you don't even know it."_

 _"_ _If you know it, then tell me! Would it hurt you to be honest with me, for once?" The shadow grew fainter, blending in with the darkness around him, until it melted in with the night's fog. "Show yourself, damn it! Answer me!" He stood up, feeling the thick air move around him, but the shadow was gone._

**/***/**

"He's crashing!"

"Get the attending in here!"

"House, move out of the way."

House pressed his back into the wall and let the nurse and neurology attending rush through. In the bed, Chase's lips were getting a blue tinge. He'd gone from hysteric to quiet in a matter of minutes, and for a moment they'd even breathed a sigh of relief thinking he'd fallen asleep. His breakdown had been difficult to watch.

Now, House was left to see from the window outside as his chest rose with the shocks of the paddle, then fall violently back to the bed. The cycle repeated itself a couple of times, until finally his heart rate stabilized.

"Jesus" said Foreman beside him. "House, this isn't NMS, he would've improved by now."

"I know."

"He's dying, House. Antivirals aren't doing anything."

"You think I don't see that? I've been here, I knew something was wrong. And it went on for weeks!" he said, losing his temper again. The beeps from the room became inaudible as Chase's stats went back to normal. "You saw it, too."

"We couldn't have know it would get this bad."

"You know what's the worst part?" House said, still staring through the blinds. "I bet he knows what's wrong with him. I bet he's known there was something wrong for a long time. But he's an idiot and didn't say anything. And now he can't."

"He would've told us if he knew."

"He tried, remember? We have to cut into his head, that's what he said."

"That doesn't mean anything. All tests were negative, there's no cancer."

"Markers are not very accurate. LP showed inflammation."

"House…"

"What?! I don't see you giving any suggestions."

Foreman sighed.

"Get some rest, we'll see about this tomorrow, he'll be ok."

"Where's Cameron?"

"She went back to her hotel, she's leaving tomorrow."

"Good. She's not helping here. In fact, he seems to be worse every time he sees her, have you noticed?"

"He gets worse every time anybody sees him, House."

He looked back into the room one last time, but he could only see Chase's faint outline through the closed blinds. The image of him wielding the pair of scissors in his apartment came back to him, hands and face all bloody, and how he'd briefly come back to himself just before he went down with the seizure. Those moments, where the ghost of his old personality peered through, were becoming more and more uncommon. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something.

The next time he stepped into Chase's room he found him staring at the ceiling.

"Hey," he said, but failed to get a reaction. Instead, Chase's lips moved as if he were whispering, constantly smacking, a symptom he'd seen many times during his days in Mayfield. After a couple of minutes he gave up and walked back towards his office, but then stopped and pushed the door to Wilson's instead.

"Hey," the oncologist said, looking up from a pile of paperwork. "How's-

"He went into cardiac arrest, last night." he said, taking a seat.

"Is he alright?"

"Well, he's alive. They shocked him back to normal rhythm, he's stable now, but his blood pressure is out of control. This pretty much rules out NMS, or anything psychiatric. I'm still thinking it could be cancer. I want to do a full body scan."

"He won't stay still for it, do you really want to drug him after he went into arrest?"

"What choice is there?"

"House, I've never seen a case like this. That much brain involvement, it would have to be a tumour big enough to see. If he had brain cancer it would have shown on the MRI."

"The MRI was taken over two weeks ago. What if it's fast growing?"

"It still would've shown. Either way a tumour growing that fast would be a death sentence. What were his first symptoms?"

"Personality changes, he was acting strange, then the sleep issues..."

"Is that still going on?"

"Yeah, he hasn't been sleeping much from what the nurses say."

"I don't think it's cancer, House."

"You didn't see him just now. He looks completely demented, he won't look at anyone in the eye, he's hallucinating…"

"You're still treating him for encephalitis?"

"Yeah, but he keeps getting worse, he's almost catatonic now. And herpes simplex encephalitis is usually faster in its progression. He should be either recovering or dead, not getting worse, then stable, then worse again."

Wilson sighed. "Shouldn't you be doing this with your team, House? Park's a neurologist."

Ignoring him, House continued, "For a moment, it seemed like the acyclovir was helping, but he never even had a fever… it's almost like someone stopped treatment for a while… or if he was being poisoned."

"Are you listening to yourself? House, no one's doing this to him, the tox screen was negative, he has no enemies. Whatever it is, it's just him."

"He's doing it to himself." House said, straightening out in the couch and fixing his eyes on Wilson.

"No, that's not what I meant-"

"I mean, what if his body is doing this to him? "

"Autoimmune? The panel was negative." Wilson leaned in towards House, hoping whatever diagnosis he was coming up with was favorable.

"I told you, his hand was shaking, didn't I? Before all this, that was one of his symptoms. He was sick, he had a cold… psychosis, hypotonia, then catatonia..."

"House, what are you thinking?"

"He was right."

"Who was right? House?"

"Chase was right. We needed to cut into his brain." He stood up to leave.

"What? House! What is it, what's wrong with him?"

House replied from the door. "I was right."

* * *

"It's autoimmune encephalitis" House said, bursting in on Foreman's office just as he was getting ready to leave. "We need to do a full body scan, check for cancer, do a brain biopsy. I was right, it's probably triggered by a paraneoplastic syndrome. It's either limbic or anti-NMDA."

"House, do you have any proof of this? Autoimmune encephalitis is extremely rare, and even rarer...-"

"In men, I know. But it fits, the paranoia, the confusion, his eye movements, it's all there. Only one of his hands was shaking, don't you remember? Half of his brain is inflamed. Most cases like this don't even show up on an MRI. If we don't start treatment he could fall into a coma any day now."

"House, treatment is not going to make him better immediately. And a brain biopsy? Are you insane? He won't survive that. What if you're wrong?"

"I'm not wrong. I can forgo the biopsy if we start treatment right away."

"House, this isn't any other patient, this is Chase. If you're wrong and he has VE, stopping treatment could kill him."

"Foreman, if he does have viral encephalitis, he hasn't reacted to treatment yet, which means he probably never will and he'll be dead in a week anyways. If I'm, right, he could be cured."

Foreman grabbed at his head in frustration.

"Cameron allowed you to make decisions for him, you have to make a decision now."

"Damn it, House, I need to have some proof before I take him off the antivirals. Steroids might kill him in a day."

"You coward. If this was anybody else you'd agree with me. You're not being objective."

"Neither are you, House! How could we possibly be objective? We shouldn't even be on his case!"

"I'm always objective. He needs IViG and steroids right now."

"If you were, you wouldn't be in his room every single day, and you might have even dismissed his case altogether and he'd be in Mayfield right now. I know you, House. I know you care about him too."

"I CARE THAT HE DOESN'T DIE! That's why he needs the steroids!"

"I'm sorry, House, I can't let you do that without any proof."

"I'll get you your damn proof" he said, then shut the door hard behind him and walked back to Chase's room.

****/****/****

"No. No, what are you doing? Stop!" Chase's breath grew agitated and he pulled away as soon as he felt Wilson's gloved hand on his skin. He'd been lucky to have run him through the MRI when he was still asleep, but now Chase pressed his white gloved hands against the bed and refused to stay still for the physical exam.

"You need this, just stay still," said House. Though a brain biopsy was the standard way to diagnose autoimmune encephalitis, it wouldn't be necessary if House could find what was triggering it.

"Chase, I'm just going to feel around your lymph nodes. This isn't going to hurt, but I need you to stay still," Wilson said calmly. House had called him back to the hospital half an hour past midnight, and now the floor was almost empty and quiet.

"Don't. Tell him to leave." Chase said, keeping his body tense but at least not moving. An oxygen mask was still pressed against his face and and a cardiac monitor hooked up to his finger revealed a faster than normal pulse and high blood pressure.

"House, you can wait outside, I've got this." Wilson said, and House walked away reluctantly, giving Chase some rare privacy. "Are you alright, there?" he asked, seeing Chase's red-rimmed eyes and hands crossed over his chest. He nodded, but Wilson knew he wasn't. He carried on, feeling around his neck and then below his arms for any lumps. He watched for Chase's reaction when he felt for the lymph nodes in his groin, but his eyes were fixed on the roof, and he didn't move an inch.

"Chase, can you stand up for a minute? I want to do a testicular exam if that's alright. You can grab on to the bed."

Still dead serious, Chase rose from his lying position, getting Wilson to help him out of the bed. He was surprised to see how slow and painful his movements seemed. He helped him out of the gloves so he could grab onto the railing, and saw how his face had turned red beneath the mask, his eyes glassy. Despite the monster that had taken over his head, he knew perfectly well what was going on at that moment.

"This will only take a minute," he said reassuringly, and after it was done he helped him back in the bed, with none of them saying another word.

"There's a mass," he said, once at the other side of the door, where House waited expectantly. "Some inflammation too but nothing too bad. Couldn't find anything on the lymph nodes and neither did the MRI so it could very well be first stage non-seminoma."

"That's good, I'll talk to Foreman. Can you get him into surgery this morning?"

"Shouldn't be a problem. You think he'll be alright?"

"It'll take a while, but yeah."

 **A/N: Thanks so much for reading! Hope you liked this. One more chapter after this and then an epilogue. Please let me know what you think :)**


	11. Chapter 11

_He was lying in the hospital bed, staring silently at the ceiling, when the monster came back. This time, it wasted no time circling him and lunged its black body forward, latching onto the railings and sitting down at the foot of the bed. There, it released its tendrils of smoke, which travelled up and down his body like tentacles, holding him in place so he wouldn't move. Not that he could, anyway._

 _"_ _Help..." he started, but he ran out of air and his voice got lost in a quiet gasp. He felt the tentacles in his head, moving things around, causing an intense pain in his temples. His body became rigid, and he felt as though descending into the bed, as if a force on the floor was trying to swallow up the room. Smoke went up his nostrils, and his breathing became shallow._

 _"_ _This is it, Chase" the man said. "This is where we say goodbye"_

 _"_ _Help. I can't breathe," he said, trying in vain to raise his arms towards his face. He turned his head slightly and saw mountains rising up from outside the window, and the air turned cold. The man saw him struggle but didn't move an inch._

.-/-/-/-/-.

"What if he never recovers?" Foreman said, his voice hushed. House had just hooked Chase up to the IViG infusion and started the steroids. They had to wait a few hours after the surgery because he had another seizure immediately afterwards, and now he was lying in the bed on the other side of the glass, eyes open and blinking occasionally.

"Group home?" House said, with a smirk that told Foreman he wasn't serious, but the dean of medicine still looked grim.

"This isn't a joke, House."

"I'm not laughing. We just started treatment, and the tumour is gone. He'll get better."

He saw Foreman go back into the room and start asking Chase questions, but even though he was more compliant than the past week, he still couldn't focus his vision on Foreman. Through the window, he saw him try, and fail, to put his finger to his nose.

They had their diagnosis: they'd sent a sample of spinal fluid for testing and it'd come back positive for anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a subtype of autoimmune encephalitis with one of the best outcomes. But even in that case, some patients worsened despite treatment. House had been glad, in fact, that they'd found the cancer. Cases without any tumours were usually more resistant to treatment.

They just had to wait.

* * *

He heard footsteps coming into the room, but he felt too dizzy to turn his head, and though he wasn't sleepy, he could hardly keep his eyes open.

"Chase? Can you hear me?" He recognized the voice, but couldn't remember the face or the name associated with it. His eyes closed again, but he moved his hands so she would know he was still awake.

"It's Thirteen." _That was the name_ , he thought. She rustled up the sheets in the bed and adjusted the covers, then sat in the chair by the window so that she faced him directly.

"When…" he started saying, but lost the string of words before he could actually say them. "When…"

"When are you getting out of here?" she guessed. "I don't know. Foreman says you could be out in a couple of weeks maybe."

He let out a breath.

"We need to shave that beard off, though." she said, and he felt her running a hand through his face, but he showed no emotion. Instead, his eyelids drooped and he kept half-staring into space. He couldn't even fake a smile.

The next time she talked, he heard her voice but not her words, and for a moment felt like she was speaking a second language. Then even her voice started to get muted and dull, and all the while he kept staring into space, nodding his head every now and then without any reason.

 _Blink_

"He's asleep, let's come back later." He heard a voice close to the bed.

"He's always like this, it's called catatonia." Another voice.

"I thought he was over that."

"Not yet. House says it can take weeks."

He blinked, then moved to rest on his side. _Catatonia? They weren't talking about him, were they?_

Another blink, and it was night. They were gone. On the other side of the bed, he heard whispering.

"Who's there?" he called, quietly, but heard no answer, and with effort, he got to a half seated position. The room was dark, and the shadows vibrated slightly, pulsing like a broken fluorescent. There was no one there.

 _Blink_

He tossed and turned in the bed until light started to come in through the blinds, and he realized he didn't even know what day it was, or what he was doing there.

"Where am I?" he asked the nurse when she came to change his bandages.

"You're in the hospital." she said.

"In the hospital…" his mouth repeated, almost unconsciously.

"You'll be ok."

"… be ok." Again, he echoed. Then, "What happened?"

She looked at him with pity, finished up the bandages and left.

 _Blink_

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Robert Chase" he answered absentmindedly.

"How are you feeling?"

He paused, looking back at Foreman. He didn't remember seeing him come into the room, he had just materialized there.

"How am I feeling…" he repeated.

"Yes."

He didn't know what to answer, so he didn't say anything. It wasn't that he felt nothing, just that he just wasn't able to put it into words.

"Can you look at me?" he asked, and he had to turn his head. His vision was blurry, but he could make out Foreman's outline.

"Good. Do you know where you are?"

"Hospital," he said. Foreman carried a thick file in front of him, and used his pen to scribble notes after checking his pupils and reflexes.

"Do you know why you're here?"

Again he kept quiet, so Foreman carried on, making him sit up on the bed and write his name in a piece of paper. He grabbed the pencil awkwardly, and started tracing, slowly drawing out the letters, pausing every now and then to stare back at his creation disapprovingly. When he finished, Foreman asked him to draw a figure.

"No," he said, putting the pencil down and resting his back on the bed. "I'm done."

Foreman let out a breath, but obliged and removed the pencil and paper from the pull out table. He then asked him to stand up and he did so reluctantly. His legs seemed to lag behind, moving far slower than he wanted them to, but he managed to make a lap around the neurology floor before falling back to the bed exhausted. Foreman kept asking questions, and though he felt his mouth moving he wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying.

 _Blink_

"Come on, Chase, you have to eat," Thirteen again. A hospital tray had appeared in front of him. He didn't recognize the food, and the smell was strange and uninviting.

"I'm not hungry," he said.

"Fine, then," she said, crossing her arms against her chest in annoyance. "House told me you yelled at him yesterday. What happened?"

"What? No, I didn't."

"Are you still seeing things?" she said. Chase looked past her and focused on the window that overlooked the river. Dark pieces of cloth were floating on the air outside.

"Seeing things…" he mirrored, looking away from the window for a moment, and when he looked back the cloths were gone. _What things? What did she mean, still seeing?_

"Don't worry," she said, "They will go away. You'll be ok."

 _Blink_

The food tray was gone, and everything went dark.

 _Blink_

"Can you read what it says here?"

He held a pencil in his right hand, but didn't write anything.

 _Blink_

"Chase, can you look at the light?"

The beeping intensified. What time was it? Already night?

 _Blink_

"You had another seizure yesterday."

 _Blink_

His feet shuffled across the neurology floor. They were forcing him to walk, and he was tired. He heard voices whispering behind him.

"When is he getting better?"

"I don't know."

 _Blink_

He didn't like the way the hospital sheets felt on his skin.

 _Blink_

"Robert, I need you to draw me a clock."

 _Blink_

 _He was drowning. His legs kicked and his arms pulled but the surface was so far away. He couldn't breathe_.

 _Blink_

"Chase, look at me! Calm down!"

 _He was so tired._

 **A/N: Thank you all for reading! And sorry this took a little longer than usual, it's been a crazy week. If you have the time, I'd love to know what you think. Only one more chap left in this.**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Last chapter! Hope you enjoy :)**

It was early morning and the neurology floor was quiet except for a single nurse typing away in the station. House walked towards Chase's room just as Thirteen was getting out.

"Anything new?" he asked. Thirteen crossed her arms and looked back through the blinds.

"Well, he's sleeping more. That's good."

"What about his speech?"

"I still haven't been able to get more than two full sentences out of him. He repeats a lot of the words I say, but it's still an improvement from no speech at all. What are you doing here so early?"

"I work here. Can't say the same thing about you. You know, if you miss this place… I kind of have a free spot..."

"House, I'm serious," she said, dismissing him, then turned back to face the room, "Has he said anything to you yet?"

"You mean, besides 'get the hell out'? The other day he said 'I'm hungry.' Charming, isn't he?"

"Well, I'd say that's definitely progress."

* * *

The next time he passed the room he saw Chase struggling to take off the gloves the nurses insisted he wear to prevent him from scratching. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, standing a few feet away from the bed until Chase noticed his presence, but didn't help him. When he finally looked up, he stopped struggling and stared at him blankly.

"What happened?" he said. House looked back strangely. His eyes were still struggling to focus, but it was the first time he heard him ask about his condition. Or ask _him_ anything at all.

"You don't remember?" he asked back, swinging his cane around. Chase tried to follow it with his eyes, but ended up squinting with the effort, so he gave up and looked back in House's general direction.

"I can't see." He squinted again, then attempted to rub at his eyes with the white gloves.

"You can see, you just can't focus." he said. "It's not permanent."

"What happened?" Chased asked again.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Chase huffed, and House saw his face turn a shade of red.

"I don't- I didn't-" He took a deep breath, squirming his body in anger, obviously conscious of his inability to speak. "I asked, _what happened?_ "

"Hey, no need to get upset. Just trying to figure out how far back I should go." House flopped down on the chair on the corner of the room. "You want the short version, or the long one?"

"House—"

"Okay, short version, then. You had autoimmune encephalitis. Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis if you want to get specific. You've been here for five weeks."

"Five weeks…"

"Yup. You've had two surgeries, you're on IViG and steroids... you really don't remember any of this?"

Chase's expression twisted into one of panic, and House noticed his heart rate rising.

"I remember things," he said, still breathing heavily. "But they can't have happened."

"What things?"

Chase's breathing got more labored, and he looked around the room wildly.

"I can't breathe," he said, reaching out for the oxygen mask, but it had been moved out of reach from the bed.

"Yes, you can," House said. He remained unmoving in his chair.

"I can't…" Chase pressed his hands into his head.

"Yes, you can, look at your O2 stats, they're fine."

"You're not… listening to me… something's wrong." His face was now ashen grey, but House recognized it as a panic attack. He'd had about four in the past week according to the notes in his file.

"Chase, you're at 98%, seriously, you're fine."

Chase turned towards the screen and blinked several times before he finally let himself lie back down. He was still struggling to control his breathing, but some color had returned to his face and he'd stopped fidgeting. House loosened his grip on his cane, and raised his feet up on the bed.

"Ok, great," he said. "Just don't go stabbing yourself, and we'll be good to go."

Chase's head snapped back, and he squinted his eyes trying to focus on House.

"You remember that, don't you?" House said, and could very clearly see the color once again draining from Chase's face. "That night at your apartment?"

"No," he said. "That didn't happen."

"Oh, yes it did. That's surgery number one, you can check it out yourself."

Chase tried to raise his shirt with the white gloves on, struggling to untangle himself from the IV. House saw the rim of his eyes turn bright red and his lower lip start shaking. After trying for a full minute, he was able to see the white gauze that still remained over the wound on his side. He looked back at House with glassy eyes.

"It was a dream…"

"No, it wasn't," he answered, then anticipating his next question, added "Not all of the things you dreamed happened. But some did."

House left Chase staring in shock out of the window. He didn't speak again after that, and didn't even seem to notice when House left the room. From outside the window, he watched him struggle again with the gloves and then remove the gauze that covered his side, twisting his body and squinting to make his eyes focus on it. House wondered how many other dreams he now thought were real.

* * *

"Who did you see, when you were seeing me?" House asked. It was late at night, and Chase had heard him sneak into his room and stare at him for a minute. Somehow, he'd known he wasn't asleep. Turning his head towards him, Chase immediately saw his face transform into the cloaked man's, his red eyes piercing him for a second, but then the image was gone.

"I don't remember," he said. Lying seemed like the only answer he was capable of articulating.

"You do know I'm the one who figured this out, right?" House said, but Chase kept quiet. "You'd be dead if it wasn't for me."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"A 'thank you' would be nice. Instead all I get is you pretending you don't remember."

Chase held his breath. The words he wanted to say were out of his reach and he hated it, hated the disease still holding hostage a part of him, cutting him off from complete control. He looked at House now, and red eyes flashed again, making him turn away.

"Every time I came here you wanted me out," House said. "You didn't recognize me. You told Foreman I was tricking him into believing it was me when I wasn't."

"I don't remember that."

"Yes, you do. You're seeing it right now. Tell me what it is."

"Is that why you're here?" Chase said.

House seemed to ponder this for a moment, staring at him ever so intently. Then, twisting a little in his seat, he leaned further back, shifting his eyes to the ceiling, and he banged on his cane again.

"Would it really surprise you," he muttered, "if I said I'd rather you didn't die?"

Chase said nothing for a while, his brain struggling to reorder and make sense of the conversation. He thought of apologizing for being ungrateful and for the way he might've acted, for the things he might've done, but how could he even do that, if he wasn't sure what was real?

"It was a monster," he said. He couldn't describe it any other way, but he imagined that was as good an answer as House could hope. House, he guessed, was staring again, maybe in his face there was some sort of reaction, but he couldn't tell anymore. His eyes would no longer focus. "But.. you're you now." He turned away. "And I'm still not me."

* * *

Chase felt dozens of eyes boring into the back of his head as he walked into PPTH's lobby towards the elevators. Eventually, he'd been filled in on his multiple escapades and paranoid delusions, and he doubted the nursing staff on the neurology floor would easily forget him. They'd all seen him too on the day he was released, pale, thin and walking painfully slowly towards the exit, his eyes dull and fixed straight forward, his speech still slurred. Though he'd come back for regular check ups, he'd never stepped back to the diagnostics floor.

"Hey," Thirteen said, walking next to him. "You're doing great." She'd offered to drive him in, and had been there to help when he first moved back to his apartment. She and Foreman had fixed up the mess he'd left on his last day there, and helped him settle back.

They passed through the cafeteria and Chase felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. His mind travelled back to a few weeks after his release, when Taub and Foreman had taken him to a restaurant. ' _What's wrong with him?'_ the waitress had asked them when she noticed he couldn't read the menu, giving him a look of pity and then talking about him like he wasn't there. He couldn't reply, couldn't even look her in the eye, and when he finally spoke his words were drawn out and devoid of any feeling. She'd clearly thought he was retarded. He'd felt panic building up in his chest and walked clumsily to the exit, bumping loudly against the glass door, dazed but aware enough to notice everyone was staring at him. It had taken an hour for him to calm down, and he never went back inside.

Now, walking through the hospital hallways, he felt the same panic.

"I think I'm going to be sick," he said, as soon as they stepped into the elevators. He rubbed his clammy hands against his pants and exhaled, suddenly dizzy.

"What? No, Chase, come on, you've been talking about this for a week," she said, and then had to push him out once the elevator doors opened.

"We can come back some other time," he said, reluctant to take another step towards the hall.

"At least go in and say hi. No one's saying go back to work, let's just go and say hello. It's not like we can leave, you've got a check up with Wilson in one hour."

Chase looked up just as the elevator gave a ring and the doors opened, but remained frozen in place until they closed again.

"Ok, fine," he said, and missed it when Thirteen made a fist and mouthed _YES._

He pushed the door to diagnostics keeping his gaze at the floor so he wouldn't see the fellows looking at him. He knew they'd visited when he was still at the hospital, but his memory of the time was so fuzzy he barely remembered hearing them, and besides Taub he hadn't kept much contact after he was released.

He had called Cameron though, at some point, if only to confirm that the things he'd imagined her saying were just fictions of his mind. She had apologized for not staying with him, and even though she'd never said any of those things, he could tell she felt hurt that he'd imagined her that way.

"Well if it isn't Frankenstein coming back to his monster," House said, and Chase felt the hairs in his neck rise at the last word, but tried to keep his face calm. The fellows rose to greet him, then filed out the door, followed by Thirteen who stopped to chat with Taub. Within a minute, they were alone.

"I have to say you look… ok," House said, raising his legs to the top of his desk. "Did you get my messages?"

"Yes. That's kinda why I'm here."

"Thirteen tells me you've been quite a handful." Chase blushed. He didn't know she'd told anyone of the nights where he'd call either her or Foreman, paranoid that his hallucinations were coming back, or of the time he'd gotten lost around Princeton and they'd tried to convince him to carry a medical alert bracelet just in case. He also hoped she hadn't told him how he'd screamed at her for no reason at all, his words carrying his disease's poison long after he'd been released. It had taken almost five months to get him to feel more like himself.

"I'm better now," he said instead. "Memory's still an issue, and concentration, but I'm getting there. I still have some months of rehab left."

"Seizures?"

"Not for six weeks. Still on loads of pills but they're weaning me off soon."

"No more monsters, then?" House said, and Chase had to let out a controlled breath, masking it with an awkward chuckle.

"Not anymore."

Then, as if he'd passed a test, House slowly slid the patient file towards him, then reclined back into the chair. Chase grabbed it and quickly flipped through, feeling a rush as he started to recognize patterns in the symptoms, reading and actually understanding the medical terminology, something that would have been impossible a couple of months before. He couldn't even read when he was first released.

"Have you checked for polycystic kidney disease?" he said finally, putting the folder down.

House smiled. "You can check her yourself."

 **A/N: That's it! Hope you enjoyed it, it was great hearing from you. You should probably know I got some of the medical stuff for this story from a book called "Brain on Fire" by Susannah Cahalan. Didn't want to say it before as I didn't want to spoil the diagnosis (I should also probably say I'm not a doctor). Do let me know what you think, even if it's been ages since this was published, I really do love reading your reviews, and I want to thank you all for reading, you make my day.**


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